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Varroa mites! Now what?

I have a couple hives that I purchased as small cell nucs last year. They've been treatment free since then. The state inspector took a look at them on Friday and told me I have pretty bad varroa populations and the start of some European foul brood as well as deformed wing virus. He recommended Mite Away Quick Strips (formic acid) as a way to take down the mite population. I'd prefer not to do that, but I don't know of any other options that are in keeping with treatment free ideals. I can't afford to just let both of my hives die. Is there a treatment free option? I've read the Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping, and their section on varroa says "we don't have a mite problem". And that's it. Well great. That's no help.

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

If you want to stay treatment free then here is a way... Oh shoot, I just noticed where you are at. Winter is close by for you. OK, here's my idea. Shake all the bees into a new box of foundation and keep a syrup feeder on them so they get it drawn and full of stores for winter. Be quick about it if you're going to do this way. It will remove all infecteced combs, break the brood cycle also, but will cause you to try over wintering in a single deep box nuc. Good luck on whatever you choose to do.

"A good day is when no one shows up and you don't have to go anywhere." - Burt Shavitz (Burt's Buzz)

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

With all due respect, if you're looking to keep the bees alive above their own inability to do so, you're probably looking in the wrong place.

The truth is, you don't know what they can handle until you let them. Treating them would be caving to the fear that they will die. To be treatment-free, you must put that fear out of your mind for it is left to the bees to figure out whether they will survive or not. You don't have anything that is above healthy survivor bees' natural abilities to cope with.

The inspector is only doing what he does for a living, identifying disease and suggesting treatments. All our bees have mites. The question is whether or not they can handle them.

I'm sorry if I seem callous. If it were easier, there would be more people doing it.

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

Do a search of thread that discuss drone brood striking, and splitting/brood breaks. Do that next time, before you get this far behind. About your only option now is to do as Ray Marler says, RIGHT NOW!!!

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

You could also buy a couple of the Plasticell drone (green) frames, put one in and when 1/2 -3/4 full put it in a plastic bag and freeze it for 2 days. When you pull frame #1 put #2 in and repeat. Take the frame out of the freezer, keep in the bag, use a decapping fork to decapp/remove drone brood. This one can go back in when the #2 is pulled/frozen. Mites love drones and this should help a lot, plus in dropping the mite population your foul brood virus should greatly reduce. I am a newbee, but this is what I would do to be as chemical free as possible.

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

Isn't this the "treatment free beekeeping" part of the forum? Although passive, isn't drone brood striking/freezing/removal a form of treatment? Everyone has to figure out where their "line in the sand" is, find yours and don't cross it, whether it be treatment free, passive treatments, soft treatments, etc. JMHO

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

Originally Posted by NGAnderson

Isn't this the "treatment free beekeeping" part of the forum? Although passive, isn't drone brood striking/freezing/removal a form of treatment? Everyone has to figure out where their "line in the sand" is, find yours and don't cross it, whether it be treatment free, passive treatments, soft treatments, etc. JMHO

Garrett

Sorry, I will go back and read the forum rules. My take was treatment free was not using chemicals treatments. I also use nematodes that are specific to SHB, but they are in the ground around the hive, not in the hive.
My bad and I did not mean to step outside the forum rules so my apologies.

Funny thing about success. If it works for you, it must be good for everybody, forever. Both formal and hard knock education have their place and all will benefit more if adversary is replaced with collaboration. Plumbers also saved more lives than every kind of doctor.

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

Hi Nate,

We wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide from our experience...we do not struggle with mites. What has seemed to help the most is regressing our bees to small cell and breeding from our survivors. We do both grafting and direct release of the virgins, and letting the bees make their own queens from a frame of young larvae. Neither are complicated or difficult.

We also mention several times in the book the importance of building up colony numbers...you need more than two hives to stack the odds in your favor that you will have survivors to work from.

Even if you lose your hives, you will have comb to work with for new packages which you can then requeen with (treatment-free) queens of your choice. Not sure where you got your nucs from and if they were treated or not and if so, what with, but the comb is still valuable for starting more than two more packages if you split it up.

I know it is a real struggle to figure out the right thing to do. Just remember that treating does not guarantee survival. There are plenty of folks in Worcester County who treat and lose their bees. Also, as has been pointed out by Solomon and others more than once, there are so many factors and variables at play in beekeeping that it is difficult to see linear cause and effect relationships.

If we had hives in your situation and got the advice you did, we still would not treat. We wrote the book based on what we actually do, not on what we think others should do. It helps that there are two of us and that we can talk things through and support each other through the difficult decisions...it is not always easy to go against experienced advice, but remember, the advice is coming from that person's perspective...this is true no matter who is doing the dispensing.

I'm coming to think of beekeeping as a long-term process/commitment, something like a spiritual discipline...you have a desire and goal and while there will be teachers to guide you, in the end you have to stick to a path that will ultimately be yours with no guarantee of outcome...progress may be incremental and maybe not even be visible at times but there may also be times of great leaps forward. No matter the appearance, you can never go backward

On a side note, all we heard from Worcester County beekeepers this past fall/winter/spring (including the inspector) was how the bees were short on stores due to dearth/burning through stores due to warm winter and that copious feeding was mandatory. We did not feed and most of our hives made it through alive with honey to spare, enough that we could give frames of food to the 26 packages we started this spring. Several of these were 5 frame nucs that wintered with screen bottoms directly on the ground. All were from queens we raised from our survivors. We talked a lot in the book about acclimatizing the bees to your area and we feel we are finally seeing this play out in our operation...our bees just "act different".

Not sure if this helps any more than what we put in the book...

Ramona

Originally Posted by Nate Finch

I have a couple hives that I purchased as small cell nucs last year. They've been treatment free since then. The state inspector took a look at them on Friday and told me I have pretty bad varroa populations and the start of some European foul brood as well as deformed wing virus. He recommended Mite Away Quick Strips (formic acid) as a way to take down the mite population. I'd prefer not to do that, but I don't know of any other options that are in keeping with treatment free ideals. I can't afford to just let both of my hives die. Is there a treatment free option? I've read the Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping, and their section on varroa says "we don't have a mite problem". And that's it. Well great. That's no help.

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

6-8 weeks ago I had very high mite counts in my hive. I looked at the treatment options, thought about why it was that I got into beekeeping and decided not to treat. I did continue to monitor mite levels and saw a steady decrease over the last 4-5 weeks. I can't explain this. I hope my bees survive but have resigned myself to the possibility that they won't. A possibility that always existed regardless of treatment.

I wish you all the best, you're not alone in making this tough decision,

Re: Varroa mites! Now what?

Originally Posted by sqkcrk

How did you monitor mite levels? How did you notice this decrease?

I used an SBB with a sticky board. First time was ~130/24hr, the second was 55/24hr, the third was 30/24hr. There was a two week gap between checks and I did a hive inspection after each one. There were capped and uncapped brood after each inspection, so no brood break.